Coffee Replacement Chocolate Morning Drink

One of the most beautiful things we can do for ourselves at midlife is to get to know ourselves without caffeine.

Each time we introduce caffeine into the body, we trigger our flight or flight response and your stress hormone cortisol spikes in your beautiful midlife body. We rely on this early morning jolt for daily energy and often do not realize that it is robbing us of our innate vitality and our sleep at the other end of our day.

As estrogen our juicy hormone and progesterone our balancing hormone are in decline during midlife, it is easy for our stress hormone cortisol to dominate our hormone profile leaving us anxious, losing sleep at night and feeling burnt out daily. Ironically this can cause us to lean more heavily on caffeine to jump start our day and we exacerbate the cycle down into exhaustion with our morning cup of joe!

Our job at midlife is to love on ourselves with dense nutrition and stress reducing lifestyle practices so that we support our bodies through hormonal change and reduce the uncomfortable symptoms of peri-menopause that come with changing and dominant hormones.

This may mean giving ourself healthy boundaries and a midlife break up with caffeine as we move through hormonal change. In this way we can get to know where our natural daily energy lies and ensure we can sleep like a baby through our forties and fifties and avoid feeling tires wired and frazzled.

Hot Take: you can always make up with caffeine later when your hormones are on an even keel!

This morning beverage is a recipe designed to nourish the body first thing in the morning.

It is rich in our relaxation mineral magnesium found in raw cacao and boosts our happy neurotransmitter serotonin to give you that lift in the morning that you enjoy from coffee. It includes anti-inflammatory spices and calms the brain early in the day by providing healthy fats from coconut butter and the omega 3 fatty acids found in protein rich hemp seeds.

Dates are rich in iron and the B group of vitamins and collagen provides the amino acids needed to build health skin, joints and a healthy gut lining.

Above all else, where coffee jolts the brain and leaches nutrition from the body as it dehydrates our skin, this morning elixir nourishes, calms and builds your midlife health.

Coffee Replacement Chocolate Morning Drink

Ingredients

4 tbsp raw cacao

4 tbsp hemp seeds

2 tbsp coconut oil

4 dates

1 pinch sea salt

4 cups boiled water

2 tbsp Collagen (optional)

1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)

1/4 tsp ground turmeric (optional)

1/4' fresh ginger (optional)

Instructions

Add all the ingredients into a vented blender and blend until silky smooth.

Decant into mason jars and cool.

Top with lid and refrigerate until required daily.

Sleepy Time Chocolate Cherry Smoothie

For many of us, our first indicator that we are experiencing hormonal change is a loss of sleep and a rise in our anxiety levels. We lie awake at 4am every night running over our to-do list and putting the world to right.

Peri-menopause is the mother of all wake up calls for women and symptoms are the language our bodies use to tell us to listen in and take action to meet our own needs…perhaps for the first time in our lives.

Loss of sleep and heightened anxiety are telling us that our stress hormone cortisol has become dominant in the body as estrogen our juicy hormone depletes.

Lack of sleep speeds the aging process, puts at risk of dementia 10 to 20 years down the line and effects our mood on a daily basis. Sleeping too few hours at night is linked to weight gain and sugar cravings.

It is time to take responsibility for your sleep at night and establish healthy sleep hygiene.

1. Sleep hygiene begins first thing in the morning when it is helpful to get exposure to daylight on rising to ‘prime’ the sleep hormone melatonin released in the brain in the evening.

2. A good nights sleep can also be destroyed by your morning coffee, so switch to a Matcha Latte or herbal tea to avoid spiking the natural cortisol morning spike that is a part of your circadian rhythm. Shift your caffeine intake to the middle of the day between 11am and 1pm.

3. Move your body during the day and sweat.

4. Set a reminder on your phone to turn off all electronics by 7pm so that you can avoid the blue spectrum light that prevents melatonin your sleep hormone from being secreted.

5. Form a night time routine that helps you to relax in the evening. Go analogue and read a book or soak in an Epsom salts bath with lavender oil, knowing that your skin is absorbing the relaxation mineral magnesium into the body.

6. Keep your bedroom cool. The best room temperature for sleep has been found to be 60 - 67C.

You can add this adrenal gland supporting smoothie to your evening routine to promote sleep.

Vitamin C rich cherries are a rich source of naturally occurring melatonin (our sleep hormone) and the B group of vitamins. With the addition of the healthy fat, coconut oil, this smoothie supports the health of tired adrenal glands. When our adrenal glands are exhausted it indicates that cortisol our stress hormone is running high in the body, we find it hard to drag ourselves out of bed in the morning but can get a second wind and feel frazzled and wired in the evening unable to sleep.

This smoothie contains protein and raw cacao which actively boosts our happy neurotransmitter serotonin. This is important as serotonin and melatonin share the same building blocks in the body and serotonin is the pre-cursor to our body producing melatonin to help us to sleep at night. You do not need a clinical trial to tell you that your happiness and sleep are related!!!

The addition of valerian root serves to relax you and promote restful sleep. A randomized placebo controlled (This is the gold standard ladies) study of post menopausal women with insomnia found a statistical significant number of women registered better sleep outcomes when taking valerian.
Taavoni S, Ekbatani N, Kashaniyan M, Haghani H. Effect of valerian on sleep quality in postmenopausal women: a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial. Menopause. 2011 Sep;18(9):951-5. doi: 10.1097/gme.0b013e31820e9acf. PMID: 21775910.

As the evening draws in and the body registers the natural darkness, without disruption from electronics and screens, melatonin is released to start the natural sleep cycle.

Midlife is the perfect time to get empowered around your sleep hygiene to turn off your electronic devices at 7pm, make yourself this smoothie, release the stress of the day and allow yourself to relax.

Ingredients

½ cup hot water

2 tbsp raw cacao powder

2 tbsp hemp hearts

1 tbsp organic virgin coconut oil

1 cup cherries, thawed if frozen

10 drops valerian extract

1 pinch sea salt

Instructions

Put all ingredients into the blender and liquefy until smooth.

Golden Energy Balls

Look at these gorgeous balls of sunshine!

I adapted a recipe by Joy McCarthy of Joyous Health to make these energy balls and they are simply delicious.

Packed with anti-inflammatory and gut healing ingredients these little golden nuggets only took me ten minutes to make and have stashed away in my refrigerator for a post walk or workout snack.

This is easy and nutrient dense eating.

Oats, hemp seeds and apricots form the base of the ball, making this a fibre rich snacking option. Fibre is the midlife womans best friend as it supports her liver to clear excess hormones from the peri-menopausal dance out of the body.

Hemp seeds are a beautiful source of plant based protein, oats are a ‘slow burn’ carbohydrate and apricots are packed with vitamin A for health eyes and tissues and also energy boosting plant sourced iron. (plant sourced iron does not constipate)

Coconut provides a gut healing healthy fat to the mix and helps to ignite our metabolism, so that it is easy to feel satiated and maintain a healthy body weight and turmeric offers depression busting anti-inflammatory and anti-cancerous properties.

I tweaked the original recipe to add Brazil Nuts. Packed with the mineral selenium that is a co-factor for thyroid hormone conversion, Brazil nuts deeply support the health of our thyroid gland at midlife. This is important if we want to feel confident, energized and comfortable in our bodies as we navigate hormonal change.

This recipe could not be simpler as we whizz all of the ingredients into a ‘dough’ in the blender.

If you are experiencing exhaustion and overwhelm, gut health issues such as gassiness and bloating after eating or have issues with your thyroid gland such as hypothyroidism or Hashimotos disease, this is your go to snack.

The recipe tells me I should make 15 energy balls but could only manage 14, which tells me that I like my balls a bit larger!

Victoria Beckham has the nickname of Golden Balls for David, so I did have a little giggle as I made rolled the dough.

Ingredients

1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut

1/4 cup hemp hearts

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/2 cup dried chopped apricots

1 tsp ground turmeric

4-5 Brazil nuts

2 tbsp lemon or lime juice

Instructions

Add all of the ingredients to a high powered blender and whizz on high until a ‘dough ‘ is formed.

You may have to keep pushing the ingredients down the side of the blender with a spatula.

Put the energy ball ‘dough’ on a chopping board and using a teaspoon measure out into 15 balls.

Roll with your hands to make 15 even balls

Refrigerate for up to a week and freeze for up to 3 months.